After making his first big splash playing a teenage heartthrob on Nickelodeon’s Victorious, Avan Jogia could have gone the easy route, playing the token high school hunk on TV and in movies. But the now 23-year-old Vancouver native wanted more. “When you’re a kid, you’re told you can be anything you want, and that’s not true—you can be one thing,” he says. “I was always dissatisfied by that, but I thought that if I became an actor, I’d get to be a dozen things.” At only 16, Jogia’s ambition compelled him to drop out of high school and move to Los Angeles. He started auditioning while living in a trailer, and he soon scored the role on Victorious. (It didn’t hurt that the trailer was in the neighborhood of the show’s star, Victoria Justice, his longtime friend.) The process of making the show, he says, “was like college, the whole experience. You learn these skills—photos, red carpets, interviews. But those things end up being ancillary. It’s only about the work, and I try my best to concentrate on that.” There is now plenty of it to concentrate on. Jogia has roles in forthcoming festival darlings Ten Thousand Saints and I Am Michael, in which he plays the lover of James Franco’s character. This summer, he will star in the Spike TV miniseries Tut alongside Sir Ben Kingsley, an idol since childhood. Shortly after our interview in New York, he’s off to scout locations for a short film that he’s writing and directing. “It’s basically about the desperation of people and what they’re willing to do, or not do, to lift themselves out of it,” he says. “I’m not in it. Because there are a lot of pieces in it, I want to make sure I’m not wearing too many hats.”